For example, a chemical munitions usually includes a munitions body (or casing) having metal walls. The inside of the munitions body contains one or more chemicals and a pyrotechnic bursting charge, the role of which is to open the body thereof and to diffuse the chemicals into the atmosphere. The toxic chemical agents of certain munitions are among those known by the name “combat gases” and the action thereof is of the irritating, suffocating, blistering, hemotoxic or neurotoxic type.
The munitions may be in a good state or somewhat damaged depending on their date of manufacture and on their storage conditions. The aim is to destroy these munitions as safely as possible for the personnel and the equipment involved in the destruction, and with the greatest efficiency in destroying the chemicals contained in the munitions.
The munitions may be destroyed by various mechanical, chemical, thermal, pyrotechnic or other methods.
The most common pyrotechnic methods of the prior art use, for destroying the munitions, donor charges such as:                blocks of plastique;        hollow charges;        cutting cords;        detonating cords;        explosives surrounding the munitions: the explosive may take various forms, i.e. solid, liquid, pasty, pulverulent or granular forms. In this munitions destruction procedure, the explosive is brought into contact with the munitions and ignited (or detonated) at one point of the explosive.        
The munitions destruction devices of the prior art, apart from the cutting cords, require the pyrotechnic and/or chemical substances, internal to the munitions or to the object to be destroyed, to react so as to obtain a significant opening of their body or their casing. They have a limited effectiveness with respect to the destruction of non-explosive chemical substances, except for the blocks of plastique and the explosives surrounding the munitions. Furthermore, the current methods of destruction generate more or less intense effects on the environment (shocks, blast, pollution, heat and fragments), depending on the architecture and the explosive of the donor charge and on the reaction of the munitions or the object to be destroyed.
Other methods of the prior art for destroying munitions consist in dismantling the munitions into its components and in collecting the chemical and pyrotechnic substances in suitable containers in order to destroy them subsequently, for example by neutralization or incineration in special furnaces.
The drawback of such a method is that it includes many delicate operations carried out on the munitions with risks for the personnel in the various steps of the method, which risks are aggravated when the munitions are in a poor state. It is frequently so after long storage under poor conditions.
Another drawback of said method is the long time needed to destroy the munitions.
The destruction device claimed in the present patent enables the various drawbacks of the destruction methods most commonly used to be alleviated.